Delusional players need to face reality

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The NHL lockout is being implemented on thin ice.

The NHL, after all, is the least of the four major sports leagues, hardly robust enough to endure a protracted absence.

As Canada's leading export to the United States, the NHL appeals to the cold-weather states and pockets of die-hards about the nation. It is hardly a transcendent endeavor in the United States, as Capitals owner Ted Leonsis knows only too well.

The Redskins are the quasi-religion of the region, the Caps somewhere in the entertainment mix after the Wizards and the Maryland football and basketball programs.

This is not a knock on hockey, a worthy game, just the geographical reality of a region that rarely receives ice time from Mother Nature each winter. Lots of us did not grow up with youth hockey.

The NHL owners have decided to respond to the obvious -- with crossed fingers, no doubt.

Their business model is broken, as Leonsis pointed out on his team's Web site. The salaries of the players have advanced beyond the means of all too many owners in the last decade.

There is plenty of blame to go around, starting with the NHL's decision to move into a number of questionable markets, Nashville, Tenn., and Columbus, Ohio, among others. That merely exacerbated the NHL's financial distress. The signs are everywhere, if anyone bothers to read them, which could be the problem.

The players prefer to live in the land of the make-believe, which is to say the multi-billion-dollar land of David Stern, Bud Selig and Paul Tagliabue, whose margins for mismanagement are far greater than the NHL's.

The NHL has come to the lockout with a modest television contract and plummeting ratings and attendance figures. This is the cold reality that eventually will cut through the intransigence of the NHL Players Association.